Limewater Investigation

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Introduction

Preliminary Experiment 1 This is what we did together as a class; We roughly filled these two containers with the same amount of water and left them for the same amount of time. 82�c 51�c 82�c 62�c Loss 31�c Loss 20�c What isn't fair? Well roughly the same amount of water isn't really fair; we should have measured the water with a measuring cylinder. We decided to insulate the glassware because the whole idea of this experiment was to look at the surface area effects the heat loss. So we wanted make the heat loss from the sides and bottom as little as possible to make it fair. Preliminary Experiment 2 Equipment: 4 pieces of glassware (with different surface areas) Corrugated Cardboard 100ml of boiling water X 4 1 X Stopwatch 4 X Thermometer 1 X Measuring Cylinder 1 X kettle I will take a number of safety precautions whilst conducting the investigation. I will ensure the kettle is used safely through-out the experiment, and hot water is transferred securely. I will use protection when handling beakers when the hot water is present. ...read more.

Middle

We tried to get the starting temperature the same, but it was really hard to. Most of our temperatures were approximately 1 to 19 degrees away from each other, which is quite bad. In other words wasn't really a fair test. We tried to make it as accurate as we could, bit it was hard to. We decide to leave it for 9 minutes, but we are going to check the temperature every minute. We repeated this experiment 3 times. One of the experiments we did it by ourselves without using the laptop to do the data logging. The second experiment we used the laptop for the medium beaker and the small beaker to do the data logging. The third experiment we used the laptop for the large beaker and the conical flask to do the data logging. My Prediction: I predict that the largest beaker that the heat loss will be the greatest and in the smallest beaker the heat loss will be the smallest when insulated. This is because more surface area is present and more particles in contact. ...read more.

Conclusion

Evaluation: My method was a sensible way of testing my prediction because I started at normal conditions and followed instructions clearly. My results as I said before weren't really reliable because the data logging didn't really work and when we did it by ourselves we didn't exactly checked the temperature dead on every minutes so that could of affected the temperature and the results at the end of the 3 experiments. Our data logging didn't work, so we had to use other people's results. The reason why ours didn't work is because the temperature wasn't high enough to work properly. I could have done the three experiments in controlled conditions i.e. in the group we should have worked more as a team than individuals because we could have made the results even more reliable as they were. If I repeated this experiment again I probably would have taken an average of all the temperatures for accuracy. To make it a fair test, I would try harder to keep the starting temperature the same; also the thermometer should not touch the glass; otherwise it will be measuring the temperature of the glass, not the water and stirring the water would allow an average temperature to be recorded, not a local temperature. ...read more.